VATICAN CITY
Crux
Inés San Martín
VATICAN CORRESPONDENT
May 17, 2018
ROME – After a three-day summit between Pope Francis and 34 Chilean bishops to discuss sexual abuse and abuses of power, the pontiff thanked the Chileans for being open to changes in the “short, medium and long term … to restore justice and ecclesial communion,” but did not describe the content of those changes.
In a letter the pope gave the bishops which the Vatican released Thursday afternoon, the pope called the Chilean bishops to continue working for a “prophetic Church, capable of putting at the center what’s important: the service to her Lord in the hungry, the imprisoned, the migrant, the abused.”
In the text, Francis also thanked the bishops for “welcoming the invitation” to undertake a “frank discernment about the grave events that have damaged ecclesial communion and weakened the work of the Church of Chile in recent years.”
The pope had summoned the bishops to Rome after dispatching Maltese Archbishop Charles Scicluna and Spanish Father Jordi Bertomeu to Chile to look into the case of Bishop Juan Barros, accused by survivors of clerical sexual abuse of covering up for his mentor Father Fernando Karadima.
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